


Chains and Confessions

by TheSpace_Dragon



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Almost Confessions, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining Lance (Voltron), Red Paladin Lance (Voltron), between seasons 4 and 5???, but yeah, dont really see it tho, its a thing now, its real ambiguous, mentions of torture, oblivious pining keith, that honestly needs to be a tag dammit, youre welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 13:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14671989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpace_Dragon/pseuds/TheSpace_Dragon
Summary: Solo missions are never a good idea. Lance knew this, argued it, but does anyone listen to him? Nope.And now he was captured and probably going to be tortured. Awesome, this was just the best thing ever! (Someone please just come rescue him, cuffs are awful.)





	Chains and Confessions

**Author's Note:**

> This is a long overdue gift for a lovely follower of mine, I hope you enjoy!

Lance’s last words were probably going to be “Oh, quiznak”. There was no getting around that. That was him: summed up in two words. He was pretty sure they translated to “oh, fuck” but he could never really be sure (Alteans, right?). He yanked on Red’s levers and circled back around to face the Galra fighter in front of him.

Just like every time they try to run a routine mission, it never exactly goes to plan.

Never.

Not once have things gone to plan.

They should know this by now, but do they? Nope.

Red thrummed with energy and Lance slammed the levers forward, causing Red to dive into the fray. She spun and wove through all the fighters, each of Lance’s shots hitting their mark. His Lion purred proudly as they raced through open space, trying to get out of the swarm of fighters.

“There has to be a way to take down that freaking cruiser!” Lance muttered, glaring at it through one of his screens. Red thrummed in agreement. The ion cannon fired, and he slammed his controls forward, putting Red into a nosedive.

They barely dodged out of the way, but as soon as Lance brought Red out of the dive, another shot went off, nailing them. He grunted as Red’s whole frame shook. Everything went dark after a few seconds and he couldn’t hear Red in the back of his mind anymore.

“No no no no—”

Lance tried to run diagnostics, check the damage manually—anything to get Red moving again. He looked out and saw the cruiser coming toward them, the tractor beam beginning to light up.

He pulled at the controls frantically. “C’mon Red, I know you’re still there!”

Bright purple light filled Red’s cabin and Lance squinted against it. Well, this shit day just got worse. With Red down for the count, Lance’s mind kicked into overdrive. He punched in the sequence to turn on his emergency beacon and activated the tracker in his armor. It would probably be taken, but as long as it was going, Pidge would find it. He had to believe it. The team would find him.

The Galra cruiser’s bay opened and swallowed Lance and the Red Lion; the violet light disappeared, and Lance was left in the dark. He materialized his bayard and held it at the ready. He was safe here for the time being, he could hold them off until the rest of Voltron got to him. He could do this. He could do this.

Red couldn’t power up enough to get her shield up, and Lance knew that as soon as the Galra figured out how to open the hatch, he was a goner.

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

Lance flinched and raised his bayard. He was scared—oh god was he terrified—but he would fight until he was done.

“Com log 38, some star-date nonsense and blah blah blah… But I’m Lance, the Blue—no, the Red Paladin of Voltron. And it would be nice if someone could go back to Earth and tell my ma that I love her. Thanks.”

There was no reply as the door was pried open and the shootout began.

* * *

Keith adjusted his frequency as he began to pick up a distress signal from the Arloqiuan system. He was only a few clicks away.

_“…Red—sssskk…be nice—shhhk—Earth sshhhhhkkkkk… love—thanks.”_

The transmission was cutting in and out. Keith fiddled with the readouts as he prepared to fly in and help but he froze at the mention of Earth. Barely thinking about it, he slammed forward on the thrusters and sped through open space to reach the Arloqiuan system in record time. He heard Kolivan call out to him through the coms, but Keith wasn’t paying attention. He couldn’t afford to let the universe lose a paladin of Voltron. Not when they had a chance.

Keith flipped off his communications and focused on flying in to intercept the battlecruiser; it was gliding through the outer reaches of the largest gas giant in the Arloqiuan system. A few sparse moons were orbiting the planet as well, looking to be moderately populated. Keith grit his teeth, a low growl escaping him as he flew in closer, eyes searching the of debris the cruiser was leaving behind.

Various Galra ships drifted in the wake of broken Rebel ships that trailed behind the cruiser. Some of them still sizzling from a Lion’s laser beam. Keith circled the cruiser in his own Galra fighter and tried to find the best place to get started. The bay doors at the rear of the ship were caught in the middle of their closing sequence;  flashes of light and giant red force-shield kept it from closing.

_Lance_.

There was a small gap at the top of the bay doors, just enough for his fighter to squeeze through. “Here goes nothin’,” he muttered to himself as he careened his fighter through the opening and crash landed it on the other side of the hangar, lasers already firing.

Causing as much damage as he could before his ship lost its integrity, Keith kept firing until it slid into a pillar and the sudden stop threw him forward into his dashboard. Grunting, he righted himself, grabbed his knife and willed his mask into place.

But he didn’t even have a chance.

Just as he opened his ship’s doors, there were lasers blasting and he was pinned down in the cockpit. Keith cursed. The Blade of Marmora agents almost never carried firearms, all he had was his knife. Damn, he really wished he had his paladin armor, at least that had a shield.

The firing stopped, and Keith could hear a heavy-footed Galra walk up to the base of his ship. _“Step out of the ship, filth! Your comrade has already been seized.”_

He gripped his knife’s handle tighter; so tight the gloves he was wearing creaked with the pressure. They had Lance. They had a paladin of Voltron and the Red Lion. And now they were about to get their hands on a Blade, the information held between the two of them could turn the tides of this millennium-long war.

“Fuck,” he bit out. His mind was racing, thinking through all of the possibilities he had. Stick it out and try to fight his way out or give up and break out. Instantly his mind went through how each option could possibly play out. Fighting obviously carried the risk of dying, if it weren’t for Lance, he would have already been looking for something within his ship to aid him. But he had no idea what Lance’s condition was. For all he knew, Lance could be unconscious and the risk of him—or even both of them dying would be an untold amount higher.

Keith sighed and ground out a couple more curses before sliding his knife down the ramp. A dark chuckle made its way up the ramp followed by, _“Smart move, Blade. Knock him out and put him with the paladin.”_

There was a rush and Keith struggled, taking out a few guards—a feat considering he was unarmed—before he was knocked unconscious and his vision went black.

* * *

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

…

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

…

When Lance came to, his head was throbbing and each time someone else slammed on the metal door locking them inside, pain made his vision white out around the edges. He winced, groaning as he forced himself back into the realm of the living to tell the jackwagon who was banging on the door to quit it.

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

“Would you stop that? Some people are trying to keep their heads from pounding and they can’t do that when you’re banging on the quiznakking door like that!”

“Lance? You’re awake?”

Lance groaned and forced himself upright and scowled in the dark. “Yes, I’m awake, no thanks to the noise you’re—Wait, _Keith?_ ”

Keith knelt in front of him, suddenly very close and still, Lance could barely make out his features, their cell was too dark to make out much of anything. One midnight eye was close to swelling shut and his hair was a mess of tangles, but from what Lance could see in the dark, Keith looked extremely relieved that he was awake.

“Keith? What the cheese? What are you doing here?” Lance tugged on his wrists, but they were handcuffed together in front of him. Looking at Keith, his were handcuffed as well, but the cuffs were scratched up from banging on the door.

“I caught your distress signal and the open comm link you had going,” Keith explained, reaching up to tilt Lance’s head side to side, checking for injuries. “I was only on the other side of the neighboring system when I picked it up. Came as fast as I could.”

Lance jerked his head out of Keith’s grasp (gentle as it was) and gaped at him. “Weren’t you supposed to be with Kolivan?”

Keith frowned and sat back on his haunches. “‘Supposed to be’ being the key phrase there.”

“Doesn’t explain why you’re even out here in the first place.”

“…it was nothing, I was just out here to be out here.”

Lance scoffed and rolled his eyes, wincing when his neck twinged. “Look here, dude, we are captives on a Galra battle cruiser despite both of our best efforts. Might as well be honest with each other now.”

The other boy growled and looked away. “Got bored.”

“See, was that so hard?”

“Don’t push it, Lance.”

“Fine, fine.”

The two of them sat in relative silence, the thrumming from the ship and the regular rhythm of their own breathing being the only things they heard. They couldn’t even hear what was going on outside of their cell.

“So…we really are stuck here, aren’t we?” Lance said after the uneasy silence got to be too much for him. He tugged on the handcuffs again, just to do something, anything really.

“Yeah…” Keith sighed. He shifted so he was leaning against the wall beside Lance, instead of kneeling in front of him. “Even if we got out, it would have to be with Red, my ship is wrecked.”

“Lemme guess, you rushed in like always, didn’t you?”

“I can turn back time and not do that and let the battlecruiser warp away with you on it. And the Red Lion.”

Lance pouted. “Alright fine, not a hairbrained idea, stupid, not completely stupid.”

“There aren’t degrees of stupidity, Lance.”

“What d’you know, drop-out.”

Keith sighed and knocked the back of his head on the wall behind them, sounding completely exasperated with Lance already and he hadn’t even been awake for five minutes yet. “I don’t want to be here any more than you do, so we are just going to have to get along until we can think of a way out of this.”

He had to begrudgingly agree to that. There was no way Lance was going to let himself stay on this ship and eventually be dropped off at Zarkon’s door.

* * *

“Do you think they’ll feed us?”

Keith raised an eyebrow at Lance, not sure what he was getting at with the random question. “Why?”

Lance shrugged. “Dunno, but like, obviously we are important, y’know? So, wouldn’t they feed us?”

“Did they hit your head too?”

“I woke up yelling at you for banging on the door because of my head, so what do you think?”

Keith sighed and stared at their cell door again. “Forget I asked.”

“Yeah yeah, act all cool and calmly collected or whatever,” the other boy huffed, looking away with his nose in the air.

“Calm, cool and collected is the phrase.”

“Whatever.”

The quiet thrumming of the ship filled the air, both of them sitting in awkward silence, toeing the line of awkward and comfortable at the same time. As much as Lance was a welcome face, Keith couldn’t bring himself to make conversation. What was there to tell? The Blade of Marmora were secretive by nature and Keith kept to that creed since he didn’t really care to talk about himself anyway.

This was how it was going to be he realized slowly. For the time being, at least. Keith ran through all the information he had. The Red Lion was in the hanger, fairly undamaged. He and Lance were unhurt, disregarding the minor head injuries. His fighter was destroyed. They were being held in an unknown location in the ship.

All in all, it wasn’t looking good for them.

Footsteps echoed outside of their cell, louder than the humming of the ship, and grew steadily louder until they stopped right outside the door. Either the guards stationed outside were silent or there weren’t any before.

“I want the Blade first.”

The door slid open and the Commander sneered down at them. One of the guards stepped in and raised their rifle. Keith remembered scrambling to get out of the way and hearing Lance shout just before the rifle knocked him in the temple and his world went dark again.

* * *

Lance waited for what seemed like hours and hours before Keith was dumped back in the cell. His body was limp and still cuffed, and from what he could hear over the low din of the ship, Keith’s breathing was ragged as well. As soon as the door was shut behind the guard, he scooted over to his comrade and gently rolled Keith over.

“Keith? Keith, buddy, c’mon wake up.” He patted Keith’s cheek, trying to wake him up as gently as he could. A cursory glance down his body was enough to tell Lance that Keith had endured some form of torture. There were more rips and tears in his suit, and a ring of bruises around his neck. Lance swallowed heavily and tried again. “C’mon, I know you’re still there.”

It took a while, but after patting and drumming his fingers on Keith’s chest plate, the former Red Paladin seemed to fight his way back to consciousness. Lance breathed a sigh of relief and sank back on his heels. Neither of them could afford to be off their game right now.

“Quiznak, you scared me,” Lance sighed dramatically. He was glad to see Keith awake—more so than he would like to admit to himself—but glad nonetheless.

“How long?” Keith rasped, coughing as he sat up and a hand to his throat. It burned, much like the rest of his body. His breathing was too loud, Lance was too close, and his skin felt hot and tacky.

Lance didn’t answer as he watched Keith cough and force himself to breathe. It was hard to see anyone like this, from the few aliens that Voltron had rescued on missions, the prisoners they found at testing facilities for the witch’s sick quintessence research, and now one of their own. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that this was happening, but some part of his mind always tucked it away in a dark corner, a place he rarely visited.

But he and Keith were those aliens, those prisoners, the new lab rats for the Galra on this ship.

It was a reality that he was reluctant to face and grimly forced to accept.

“Lance, how long?” Keith asked again, voice still rough from whatever they had done to his throat.

He shook himself and met Keith’s gaze. “I don’t know, a couple hours? It’s hard to tell when we don’t have any clocks or tickers here.”

Keith merely nodded and remained quiet after that. Eventually, they moved to the back of the cell, tucking themselves into a corner as far away from the door as possible. Lance couldn’t find words to say and Keith would rather sit in silence than force himself to talk at the moment. Neither of them had ever been in this situation before. Well, that was a lie, there was the whole episode between Lance and Nyma but he’d rather not count that since he was just chained to a tree rather than captured and dumped in a cell. Lance had no idea what Keith had done with the Blades; communication between Kolivan and the Voltron team was minimal at best and was only when they were cross-checking information before missions.

Lance chewed his lip as he watched Keith poke and prod at himself, wincing each time he hit an especially sore spot as he took stock of his injuries. Lance still had a headache but the rest of him was only sore from being thrown on the ground. His legs were tucked up close to his chest, his arms wrapped around them as he rested his chin on his knees. It was a stark contrast to how Keith was splayed out in the corner, legs tossed out straight and one arm flopped onto his lap while the other poked a different bruise every few seconds. Lance wanted to tell him to stop, but he knew that Keith wouldn’t listen. Sometimes he did, but most of the time he didn’t.

The ship hummed around them, and it was just underneath that constant thrum that Lance felt Red come back to him. She roared, a skulking presence in the back of his mind as he and Keith sat without saying a word. A gush of air escaped him in relief as she purred protectively in the back of his mind. She assessed him, rubbing against his psyche, reassuring and comforting him before turning her attention to her previous paladin. Lance could hear the mournful moan, the longing in her voice. He tried his best to comfort her in return, but there was only so much he could do without being in the pilot’s seat.

Red turned to him and forced him to look at Keith. The other boy had given up on cataloging his injuries and was focusing on resting now. His eyes had drifted shut and his breathing evened out. Even though Keith had left her, just like Alfor before him, Red always held her paladins in high regard. Lance smiled wistfully as she whipped her tail back and forth as she stared at Keith through him. A protective mother, that was what Red reminded him of. The kind of mother who would scold her children for doing something dangerous but turn around and show them how it was done seconds after.

“She’s still proud of you, you know.” The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them, but Red whipped around to focus on him once more, encouraging him to say more, to convey her feelings—and by extension his own.

Keith cracked an eye open and raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

“Red, ya know, your first lion before the whole Lion Switcheroo and you going to train with the Blades of Marmora? Big Ol’ Red?” Lance nudged him with his elbow lightly. Red paced between them, growling and yowling at him to say more. Her antics cemented his idea of her being a mother (after all, she was forcing two of her children to communicate after a long period of radio silence.)

The eye slid closed and Keith tilted his head back against the wall. He looked exhausted; like he’d gotten used to surviving on the bare minimum of sleep, food, and water over the past few months.

Red pawed at Lance to keep going. “Just, you know how Red is. She’s like a protective mom, always growling at us to fix something.”

Keith sighed and barely opened his eyes, staring out at nothing. “I didn’t think she still remembered me.”

“What? No, of course she does!” Lance objected. He lowered his knees to sit cross-legged and leaned toward Keith. “What makes you think that? You were her first paladin after ten thousand years, of course she still remembers you. Black has memories of her paladins, and Allura told me that Blue misses me from time to time. Seriously, the lions remember most of everything.”

“So, she’s mad then?”

Lance sputtered and shook his head, ignoring how his headache flared again. “Dude, what? No!” Red growled, arguing with him. “Okay, maybe a little,” he acquiesced before moving on, “She was a little upset but, hey, we had to do what we had to do.”

A dark eyebrow disappeared in the mop of dark hair on Keith’s head. He nodded absently and closed his eyes once more. “Sounds like her.”

Her rumbling purr filled his head and Lance couldn’t fight her infectious attitude; smiling, he kept going. “She’s glad that you’re finding yourself. Like, you’re doing something for yourself. She gets why you left.”

“I didn’t really want to leave, but it was simple math. Six paladins, five lions. Someone had to go.” Keith shrugged, keeping his eyes closed. “I had an opportunity with the Blades so I took it. The rest of you had nothing else.”

“You know that’s—”

_“Give me the Paladin.”_

Footsteps stomped up to the door to their cell and both of them remained silent until—

The door slammed open and the guards poured in once more. Lance yelped and scrambled along the wall trying to evade them, but it didn’t take long for the Galra to grab him and drag him out of the room. Keith shouted, jumping to his feet to fight them off. Another guard stepped up and slammed him in the face with the butt of his rifle, knocking him unconscious again.

* * *

Keith struggled to wake up. Even in the low light of the ship, his vision whited-out when he opened his eyes. The floor was unforgiving. His side, shoulder and hip complained loudly from the way he had crumpled to the ground after being struck. Everything swam when he blinked his eyes open again. Another concussion, he thought through a daze. He squeezed his eyes shut then blinked them open rapidly, trying to clear his vision more, but it was useless.

He couldn’t hear anything else in the room and it put him on edge. What if they were still torturing Lance? What was happening to him? Was Lance alright? What if he—Keith stopped the line of thought before he fell too far down that rabbit hole. Wincing, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. He hated feeling trapped; he hated being trapped.

A growl escaped his lips as he forced himself to stand, all of his joints creaking as if he were an old man standing up from his rocking chair. One side of his face felt tight and swollen, from cheekbone to jaw. Right where the guard had slammed their gun into his face. He could taste the coppery flavor of blood in his mouth too. Touching his nose and cheekbone, he found no gash or wetness, just tight, tender skin. It throbbed painfully at the pressure from his fingers and he gave up inspecting it.

“Fucking assholes,” he muttered, mouth tight, as he leaned against the door, trying to hear anything from the other side.

Only the humming of the ship's engines met his ears. Keith slammed his cuffs against the door in frustration. He felt useless just sitting around here like this!

More footsteps answered his attack on the door and Keith backed away from the door again, glaring at it with all the angry fire within him. The door slid open and the guards dumped a body into the cell, laughing.

_“I’ve never heard something cry so much, he sounded like a baby yupper!”_ The guard laughed, kicking Lance the rest of the way into the cell before shutting the door once again.

Keith jumped to Lance’s side and rolled him onto his back. He winced at what he saw.

Lance was beaten pretty badly. One eye was already swollen shut, and there were various other cuts and bruises all over from what Keith could see. The Paladin armor was scuffed and scratched, burn marks darkening it in different spots, and there were chips to the different edges all over. Voltron had seen its fair share of battles, sure, just like he had with the Blades of Marmora, but Keith hadn't expected to see something like this.

Lance coughed, causing Keith to flinch away from the noise. This was bad, he wasn't going to be able to fly like this.

"Lance? Lance, are you alright?" he whispered, barely trusting his own voice.

He received an answering groan, a screwed up face before one blue eye opened. Lance coughed again and rolled over to his side. "Quiznak, I almost wish I wasn't..."

Keith breathed a sigh of relief and sat back on his heels. "Honestly, same."

They let silence encapsulate them, wrapping around them in some form of new comfort. Keith was almost surprised that Lance was capable being silent for this long, but he wasn't going to point it out and disturb the quiet when his head was still pounding with every heartbeat. At least they were being left alone for the time being, Keith wasn't sure either of them could handle going through another round of torture again.

The ship creaked and groaned as it moved through space. Where they were going, neither knew nor did they have the motivation to wonder. The longer Keith sat still, the more his head began to clear. Whether it was a product of Kolivan's meditations — something that he insisted Keith do to curb his more emotional tendencies — or the possibility that the concussion wasn't as bad as he thought it was, he was thankful for it. Lance, however, remained completely silent; steadily breathing on the ground next to him. At this point the continued silence was becoming concerning but Keith couldn't figure out what to say.

After another long, indeterminate passage of time, Lance eventually sat up. He knew both of them were exhausted, having been knocked out and tortured for who knows how long before getting dumped back in a place where there was no sense of time. His whole body hurt, especially his eye which throbbed spectacularly.

It all felt hopeless. What were they supposed to do? There were guards stationed outside of their cell, they had no idea where they were inside of the ship, and Red had gone seemingly quiet. Lance tried to reach out to her, but she was a simmering pool of anger that merely told him to rest and focus on himself. Don't worry about her, she would be fine. Lance breathed slowly; in and out, in a nice slow rhythm. If he were still with Blue, she would have pressed her cool presence around him and helped him find his center again. He didn't blame Red for leaving him alone, but that didn't stop the ache in his chest from missing his first Lion.

Eventually, it got to be too much. Even with the groaning of the ship around them, it felt like they were trapped in a silent, timeless bubble. He had no idea if the team had picked up on his distress signal from his suit, had no idea if they were even trying to reach him. His helmet had been cracked and broken before he was even dragged out of Red. It made him realize that it was going to be now or never; there was so many things he wanted to say, wanted to do and he felt like his life was going to be cut short on this ship. The Galra in the torture room had seemed quite intent on it before their commander stopped them.

If this was going to be it, he was going to say it now before they were both too far gone in this hell hole.

"Hey, Keith?"

The other boy looked up from where he was sitting, eyes a little clearer than before. One side of his face was still swollen, but even that seemed to be getting better slowly.

"Yeah? What's up, Lance?"

"Look, there's been something I've been meaning to tell you and well, this seems like as good as time as any since you're here, I'm here, and we aren't off doing our own things with Voltron or the Blades. Which, is like, totally cool, by the way, that you're off doing that, seriously no hard feelings there—"

This ship groaned again, and they felt the ghost of a shudder from the entire structure.

Both of them looked up and around the cell. It couldn't be...

The battlecruiser shuddered again, and in the distance, they heard explosions and guards running and shouting at each other. Footsteps echoed outside their cell, urgently running down the hallway toward whatever was making the noise.

Red came to life through her bond to Lance, roaring out at the same time he heard whispers of the others through her.

"They're here, oh my god, they're here!" Lance scrambled to his feet and began to bang on the door. "Guys! We're in here! Guys!!"

Keith jumped to his feet and started to hammer away at the door too. Not today, he wasn't going to die on a Galra ship today.

Together they shouted and screamed through the door for what felt like forever before the door slid open in front of them and Hunk and Pidge were standing there, relieved grins spreading across their faces.

"Lance! Thank flipping god you're alright!" Hunk exclaimed.

"You guys found us!" Lance all but leapt at Hunk for a hug while Keith gave Pidge a fistbump before she cut his the cuffs off of his wrists.

"Of course we did! With your suit and the Red Lion both putting out distress signals, it would have been hard not to find you," Pidge explained, dragging Lance away from Hunk. "Now c'mere and let me get those off of you. Also, Hi Keith, nice to see you again."

More explosions resonated through the ship, causing the whole thing to vibrate. "What the heck did you guys plant on the ship?" Keith asked rubbing his wrists. He was itching to get going, the sounds of the cruiser's engines were alarming from how they were stuttering.

Hunk, laughed. "Oh that's not us. That's Shiro and Allura working out their anger issues with the ion cannons. But we gotta go, and get you guys to the hangar, Red was starting to tear the place apart from the inside when we showed up. I swear, she's scary-protective of her paladins. I’m glad Yellow isn’t so uptight."

He hefted his bayard and the four of them ran down the hallways to the hangar, dodging laser fire here and there as they got closer and closer. They entered the hangar under heavy fire, Hunk taking down most of the sentries as they raced toward the Red Lion.

She stomped on a ship as they ran toward her, knocking out whatever Galra she could before they got too close. Keith and Lance continued to run towards her as Pidge and Hunk split off, heading for the holes they made in the hull of the ship where their own lions waited. Lance brought up his shield to block incoming laser fire as Keith ran up the ramp to Red's cockpit, jumping into her mouth as she started to pick up her head.

Keith was already in the seat, pressing buttons and bringing up screens.

"Lessgo lessgo lessgo!" Lance yelled, bracing himself on the cabin bulwark and the back of the pilot's chair. (He'd get on Keith about taking his place some other time, his vision was still messed up from his black eye.)

"I am, hold on!"

Red blasted a molten gash in the side of the hangar and plowed her way through into open space. Keith brought her around, firing off another bright beam at the battlecruiser before peeling off toward the castle in the distance. Any Galra ships that might have pursued them were already blown to pieces from Shiro and Allura's teamwork.

In the back of Lance's head, he felt Red purr with contentment, two of her paladins back with her once more — however temporary that may be.

Keith breathed out a sigh of relief, sagging against the back of the pilot's chair and closing his eyes. "That... that was close."

"Yeah, no kidding," Lance agreed, propping his chin up on his hand as he leaned more against the back of the chair. "I seriously thought we weren't going to make it for a second there."

Keith cracked open his eyes and studied Lance. "About that... what were you going to say before the others came and broke us out?"

He looked away, fighting back the blush that threatened to expose him. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Lance."

"Nope, I don't remember, I was in a haze—"

"Just answer the damn question, I know you remember."

"—and I'm pretty sure that it had nothing to do with my feelings for you —"

"You're what?"

"—and not to mention all those times I thought you were cool and stuff fighting with your sword-blade-thing —"

"Lance, slow down—"

"—or any of the other cool stunts you managed to pull when you were on the team, nope, definitely wasn't any of that."

Okay, now they were both blushing and avoiding looking at each other.

Lance took a quick peek out of the corner of his eye to look at Keith, waving a hand in the air. "It was probably the head injury I have that was making me think all those things."

Keith rolled his eyes and looked back at all the displays he had up. "Yeah, well, maybe I was thinking those same things during that moment. Two concussions in a row make it hard to think straight."

Lance nodded. "Yup, sounds about right. We cool?"

"We're cool."

"Cool."

**Author's Note:**

> Yo, what up? Do the thing peeps.
> 
> Tumblr: [thespace-dragon](http://thespace-dragon.tumblr.com/)


End file.
